mine, and mine alone!
by midnightsnapdragon
Summary: The girl claims sanctuary in Takodana Cathedral. ("The Hunchback of Notre Dame" AU.)
1. I know what you were imagining

…

He shoved through the cathedral doors. The air inside was thick with incense, heavy and cloying in his nostrils. Bloody priests. Suffocating the only quiet place left in this junkyard of a city. But he couldn't dwell on that for long, because the girl – the scavenger, the nomad, the witch – was hurtling toward the staircase at the other end of the hall.

At last. At _last, _he had her.

_"Scavenger!" _he roared.

She skidded to a halt beneath one of the stone pillars that lined the cathedral. Then she turned and faced him, defiance in her tilted chin.

"I claim sanctuary!"

"The saints will not protect a heathen girl." He strode forward, anger warring with something like eagerness inside him. "The penalty for witchcraft is death, _c'yarika_. Justice must not be denied."

She scoffed. _"Your_ brand of justice." But as he drew closer, something like apprehension dawned on her face. "You can't arrest me here," she said uncertainly, and took a step back, as if realizing that _sanctuary _was less a magic shield than a gamble. "This is sacred ground –"

"Oh, that won't be a problem," he said coldly. "I will simply have to arrest you somewhere else."

He made a high, sharp gesture above his head. The scavenger's eyes widened at the squadron of white-clad guards that filed in and fanned out behind him.

"What, all this to capture one junkrat?"

"A junkrat who defied me. Drag her outside," he snapped to his men, and they rushed forward with sword and rope at the ready. "If she resists, you may knock her unconscious."

"Oh no, you don't!"

Ren barely bit back a curse.

Maz Kanata, archdeacon of Takodana, was hurrying down the stairs in her clerical robes. Though she was half the size of the shortest of them, his men faltered and stopped, and Ren himself seethed. What fools.

Maz put herself between him and the scavenger, making a wide gesture as if to sweep the girl behind her back. "You aren't to touch her."

He curled his lip. "My hands are clean of her _heathen _flesh, Archdeacon."

Maz shot him a warning look before turning to Rey.

"Are you hurt, child?"

"No," said Rey, somewhat reluctantly, her eyes flicking between them as if unsure who she needed to fight. "But there was a lot of chasing and terrorizing."

"Well, he's not going to chase and terrorize you here." Maz patted her arm. "Kylo Ren learned years ago to respect the sanctity of the church."

_("You! Scavenger! Get down from there!"_

_A hush fell across the crowded arena. Her staff in one hand, the mask she'd just peeled off in the other, Rey turned to look at the Master of Knights where he'd stood up on the dais. "Why?"_

_He pointed at her. "Desert heathens are not permitted to join in the honourable tournament of knights! Descend at once, and the second runner-up will be crowned champion."_

_"The second runner-up yielded to me!" she shouted. "The only thing he should be crowned is the King of Cowards!"_

_There were a few jeers and whoops from the rabble. But the Master of Knights – whose true name was lost to time, and known only as Kylo Ren – narrowed his eyes._

_"Desert witch," he hissed. "You won using Light-side sorcery, not righteous combat."_

_Rey felt her whole body go taut with fury._

_"Then," she said, "it seems I judged the runner-up too harshly." And she levelled her staff at Ren across the arena. "The only coward I see is _you!"

_Everyone watching gave a collective gasp. Then a deafening clamor rolled through the crowd like a breaking wave, and Ren, utterly thunderstruck, could not master himself well enough to call for order. Rey was shouting above the din._

_"You swore to purify this city of heathens and gutterlings like me, and yet we've thrived! You fault the Light Side for corruption and lawlessness, but it's your own failures that are to blame –"_

_He had gone a livid white. "SILENCE!"_

_"And now" – she raised her voice louder still – "now you're afraid a junkrat might win on her own merit!" She gave a sharp, scornful laugh. "You can lie to yourself and your minions, but everyone knows you will NEVER be as strong as Darth Vader!"_

_The uproar reached a wild crescendo, as if she had dealt him a fatal blow in the gladiator pit. Ren turned on his guards._

_"Captain Finn, arrest her!"_

_Then chaos erupted.)_

Well, well, thought Ren, and smiled grimly.

"One day," he said to Maz Kanata, "you won't be around to save every hapless orphan that comes to your door." He snapped his robes aside and gestured for the guards to leave.

As they filed out of the cathedral, he ducked behind one of the farthest pillars. "You're perfectly safe, my dear," he heard Maz say in a soothing voice. "Not even he would dare violate this holy place." Pattering footsteps. "I'll be in the belfry if you need me."

He waited for silence before stepping back into the light of the dappled, stained-glass windows. Rey was staring up at them, mesmerized, her face childlike in its wonder.

"We're not done yet," he said.

She gave a start and whirled to face him. "I've claimed sanctuary. The archdeacon –"

He prowled closer, his robes billowing over the marble floor. "Oh, sanctuary, sanctuary. Maz Kanata's technicalities. Do you really think there is any place in the world where you could run and be safe from me?"

"The Resistance sure found one," she fired back, and he snarled: he'd been searching for the insurgents' nest for years without success. "Besides," Rey went on, backing away as he advanced, "everything I said, I'd say you deserved. I won't recant."

"More's the pity."

Her back hit a pillar. He loomed over her now, close enough to feel the heaving of her chest. She bunched her fists and glared up at him in defiance.

"You have no power here."

"Don't I?" he said softly. "This is a church. And I am a holy man."

She sneered. "I'm not sure about that."

He seized her wrists. Rey tried to wrench free, but he held her still, his grip like iron, and bent his head into the crook of her neck. This close, he could smell the sweat in her hair, and something else too: sand and grit, copper and steel. A scavenger's scent. He could feel her pulse under his fingers, an exquisite throbbing where his lips were poised over her jugular. His head spun like he'd drunk too much wine.

She craned her neck away from him, her voice low with disgust. "What are you doing?"

"I see your mind," he murmured. His eyes were drifting shut in something like rapture. "You think you know what suffering is, _c'yarika? _You think your desert life taught you the meaning of hunger? _You _are not bound by cold, iron chains to the altar. _You _have never felt the scalding touch of hellfire."

"But I will, is that what you're saying?"

"No."

Ren lifted his head, allowing his cheek to slowly, deliberately brush against hers. The girl went as still as if she'd turned to stone.

"You may be a heathen," he whispered, his breath hot in her ear, "but all is not lost. I can guide you. I can save your immortal soul."

Rey caught her breath.

He smiled.

Then, with a guttural bellow that echoed off the vaulted roof, she drove her knee into his stomach and shoved him away. He staggered, for a moment too surprised to be angry: only lost, disoriented, he had expected – he had thought –

What? That she would come willingly into his arms? That _he, _not she, would have the sense to end this little tryst? Instead he'd let the desert witch lull him into a stupor, let her _blind _him.

Again.

When he looked back up at her, she was breathing hard, her eyes blazing with anger.

"My soul," she said lowly, "does not need _saving. _But yours, O Master of Knights … Do you know what they call you and your order, out in the desert?" She pointed to the stone effigy at the far end of the cathedral. "Do you know what they say about your so-called saint?"

He let his eyes slide to the effigy. Vader's formidable mask stared back at him, daring him to be weak, daring him to fail –

"He was a witch too," said Rey, with savage, vindictive pleasure. "He was a witch _just like me_."

Ren's vision went red.

A witch?

Darth Vader, the holiest being to ever walk the earth, a _witch?_

Nearly rabid, he lunged for the scavenger. She slipped from his grasp like a desert wind. The next thing he knew, she'd deftly pinned a corner of his robes to one of the elaborate candlesticks lining the grand hall, and his clothes were on fire. He cursed and flailed, stamping on the hem of his robes as she fled up the marble stairs and vanished into the cathedral.

_Damn her_. She had goaded him into violence. Here, of all places, before the eyes of the saints and Takodana herself. Such was the power of her witchcraft, that it could  
reduce his self-control to nothing.

With a silent snarl, he swept aside his burnt robes and marched for the cathedral doors.

…


	2. Hellfire

…

He knelt in the darkness of the confessional chamber.

"Forgive me," he said. "I feel it again."

The cold of the stone floor leached through his robes. He could have had rugs laid down here, to soften his prayers and gentle his knees, but Snoke had taught him to deny himself. A cleric should possess only what he needed; the rest was frivolous, intemperate.

And there was no such thing as a gentle prayer.

"It's _her. _She tempts me to the Light. I thought I'd snuffed it out, but –" He stopped, steadied his voice. "You know I'm a righteous man, Grandfather. I've given everything I have to you. To the Dark Side. But now it's plain how weak I truly am."

And how strong _she_ truly was. For she must be a very powerful witch, to lay a spell like this on the likes of him. He of all people should have been immune to her heathen magic. Instead, he was struggling with himself as he had never struggled before.

"I cannot write to Master Snoke for guidance. He would sense these unholy thoughts, I know it. He might think he was mistaken to have faith in me." Ren raised his eyes to the melted skull where it rested on a pedestal. "Perhaps he would be right. But I – I could not endure it if he abandoned me."

The skull sat watching him, silent as the grave.

He lowered his eyes again.

"She's in my head, Grandfather. I can think of nothing else. How she slipped away. How she _bested_ me." A tremor passed through him, as though the scavenger stood directly behind him, her soft breath ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. "I must be going mad. Why else would the sun feel gentle-cold compared to one of her hateful looks? Why else would the saints in every icon have her face? And why, whenever I try to pray, the name on my lips is not Snoke or Mother Padme but Rey, Rey, _Rey_ …"

He took a ragged breath.

"Torture would have been kinder. Better the rack or the breaking-wheel than this – this _mirage_ offering me every base desire of some treacherous, still-Illuminated corner of my heart. And yet ... and yet ..."

One hand rose to his face, gently tracing the scar.

"... perhaps she is not beyond salvation. I could teach her. I could show her the righteous path. She would be glorious in the Dark, I know it, if she would only give up her heathen ways. If only she would –"

But here he stopped, the words freezing on his lips.

_If only she would give herself up to me._

Whatever this was, a sickness, a spell, it had pierced him through more completely than he could have imagined. He had to confess. Only Grandfather could purge him, and that only if Ren acknowledged his sin.

So why could he not say it aloud? There was no shame in it, surely. Grandfather already knew everything, saw everything, even the things Ren wished he would not see.

_No._

_Not everything._

Ever since the day he first laid eyes on her in the arena, a scrappy sandrat who'd somehow knocked his knights to the ground without the slightest finesse, he had lain awake in the night, trying to staunch the fever that stirred inside him: but it was useless, he couldn't stop his heart from quickening, his languid blood from boiling over, at the memory of her scornful face. How dare she defy him? How dare she call him coward? Full of rage, he promised himself he would soon have her at his mercy; he would _show _her his strength, the terrible power of the Darkness, and this nothing, this _nobody _would no longer be able to deny him; she would put herself at his mercy and be _grateful_. And he would have liked to end it there, but the fever was faster, and it flooded him with such electrifying visions that by dawn he was nearly writhing on his sterile cot, deliriously clawing for self-control: Rey, waiting in the shadows of his barren cell, wearing only a simple white chemise; Rey, pinned between him and that pillar, this time baring her throat to him in invitation; Rey, prowling around him as she'd done in the forest, Vader's sword tracing a slow fiery line down his cheek – down his throat – _down_ –

And when he rose in the morning with sleepless circles beneath his eyes, he knew that he did not hate her because she was a pauper and a heathen, nor because she'd humiliated him and scarred him for ever. No: he hated her because simply by existing, she made him yearn for everything that a holy knight was not supposed to have.

Well, as she had ruined him, so he would ruin her. He would have her surrender to the Darkness; he would hear her gasp for salvation; he would teach her what it was like to _burn._

"I beg you, Grandfather, protect me. Free me from her spell. If I can vanquish her, I can vanquish this corruption inside me, and be free of sin."

He stood and crossed himself.

"By the grace of your training, I will _not _be seduced."

…


End file.
